Hi, I’m Rée.
Growing up, I felt like the education system wasn’t built for people like me to succeed. As a student with undiagnosed neurodivergence, learning disabilities, and anxiety, I struggled to learn in the ways my peers learned.
In the decades following, I became an educator and taught in various classrooms around the world. I taught in public schools, private universities, large government funded programs, and even small academies. I designed curriculum, measured student success, and even assessed teacher efficacy.
Then, while teaching a group of English language learners in South Korea, who like me, hadn’t received adequate attention in school, I realized I was using the same methodologies as the ones that had failed me.
homeroom is my attempt to remedy this on an international scale. To speak with as many people from around the world about their own education systems to rethink what schools can be. What it should be, when we design systems and metrics which are inclusive of more diverse types of learners and thinkers with varying levels of family involvement and access to resources.
In this episode, I speak with Mel—an educator, artist, interculturalist, and reader—about her earliest memories of growing up as the gifted, oldest daughter of 6 children. We talk about her experiences of making friends—and making bullies—across the US, England, Korea, and Germany, and what perspectives she gained by living within multiple cultures. We also discuss cultural relativity and ethnocentrism through personal anecdotes and why it’s important to read widely and diversely to minimize our biases and the ability to fall victim to single stories of people who are different from us.
Here is our edited conversation.
Computer-generated Transcript
Accessibility Disclaimer: Below is a computer generated transcript of our conversation. Please note that there are likely very many errors––including the spelling of our names––and may not make sense, especially when taken out of context.
00:00:03:02 – 00:00:29:23 Unknown Hi, I’m Ray. Growing up, I felt like the education system wasn’t built for people like me to succeed as a student with undiagnosed neurodivergent learning disabilities and anxiety, I struggled to learn in the ways my peers learned. In the decades following. I became an educator and taught in various classrooms around the world. I taught in public schools, private universities, large government funded programs, and even small academies.
00:00:30:01 – 00:01:00:08 Unknown I designed curriculum, measured student success, and even assess teacher efficacy. Then, while teaching a group of English language learners in South Korea who, like me, hadn’t received adequate attention in school, I realized I was using the same methodologies as the ones that had failed me. Homeroom is my attempt to remedy this on an international scale, to speak with as many people from around the world about their own education systems, to rethink what schools can be, what it should be.
00:01:00:10 – 00:01:36:06 Unknown When we design systems and metrics which are inclusive of more diverse types of learners and thinkers with varying levels of family involvement and access to resources. In this episode, I speak with Mel, an educator, artist, intercultural ist and reader, about her earliest memories of growing up as the gifted oldest daughter of six children. We talk about her experiences of making friends and bullies across the United States, England, Korea and Germany and what perspectives she gained by living across these multiple cultures.
00:01:36:07 – 00:02:07:00 Unknown We also discuss cultural relativity and ethnocentrism through personal anecdotes and why it’s important to read widely and diversely to minimize our biases and the ability to fall victim to single stories of people who are different from us. Here is our edited conversation. I guess the easiest way to start is to say that I was a weird child. I’m sure no one can relate, but I was a very weird kid.
00:02:07:01 – 00:02:27:16 Unknown I mean, I it’s interesting because I think you mentioned having a diverse perspective, but that’s not necessarily something I developed for myself. It’s something that just kind of happened because of the way I grew up. So I grew up in a family with a military father. We moved a lot. I went to five or six different elementary schools.
00:02:27:16 – 00:02:47:06 Unknown Even I lost count. And then when I was about nine, we moved to Colorado, where I grew up, and I went to two different middle schools and one high school, and I had to kind of fight to go to one high school. But the reason I changed so much, not only because of moving, was because I was trying to kind of fly.
00:02:47:06 – 00:03:05:01 Unknown I had been put in like those gifted and talented programs in elementary school, and I hated them because I went from feeling kind of smart to being the dumbest kid on the block. Wow. And I hated it, Right? So I was always trying to kind of stealth out. But then I would go to a new school and somebody would see something I wrote and be like, let’s test her.
00:03:05:01 – 00:03:33:09 Unknown And I’d be like, like I end up in that gifted classroom. Wow. And then eventually. And it was weird because and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to be in the gifted classroom. It was that I think I had a lot of undiagnosed things. And I come from a family with a lot of undiagnosed things. So, for example, I would do really, really well in English, in languages and history and social studies and bomb everything else.
00:03:33:11 – 00:03:54:12 Unknown So I would start the you know, I’d get into these gifted programs, these gifted classrooms, the first quarter or the first month, I’d be like top of the class and everything. My teachers are like, Wow, that’s great. And then the truth would come out and I would just start sucking at everything. And you know what I didn’t realize at the time?
00:03:54:12 – 00:04:16:16 Unknown And it’s interesting because I just wrote an essay about this that was published in an anthology called Gifted Ish, and it’s all about kind of my journey through school and how hellish it was because I just felt so out of place all the time. And I think what I didn’t realize at the time was that, you know, I, I internalized it in a way where I thought that all of the other kids are smarter than me.
00:04:16:18 – 00:04:38:11 Unknown But that wasn’t it. All of the other kids had help because for my parents, why that ended was, you’re in the gifted class. So now you’re smart. Be smart. And you know, but what I but I didn’t realize and what my parents didn’t realize because they didn’t come from the kind of backgrounds that my classmates, my peers, parents were coming from.
00:04:38:13 – 00:04:58:06 Unknown They didn’t realize that they were had they had private tutors. They had prep classes for things like the SAT in the S.A.T. They had like much more stable home situations where studying was a priority. I think the way that I put it in the essay and the way that I that I finally was able to think about it in a way that could give me a peace about it.
00:04:58:08 – 00:05:13:06 Unknown For a long time, I was really not angry, but, you know, a little bit resentful, a little bit better. I kind of always felt like I could do so much more if I’d had the right support. And then I had to get over that because I’m middle aged and you can’t be in your middle age like my mommy did and you can, but it makes you a horrible person.
00:05:13:08 – 00:05:38:09 Unknown Right. So I the way that I was able to finally, like, metabolize that, I guess, is to realize that my peers were in situations where their parents were comfortable enough to invest, to pay them for their future success, to invest in them for their future success. My parents didn’t have the resources to do that, so there was a very different expectation.
00:05:38:11 – 00:05:57:10 Unknown But when you are the dumb kid in the gifted class, you don’t you don’t understand that at first, right? So that’s kind of it’s interesting. I but also I was a weird child. I was the kind of kid, I mean, and also I was stubborn and I only wanted to do the things I wanted to do. So which was not math and science.
00:05:57:10 – 00:06:13:06 Unknown I mean, I like science, but I was really bad at it. I was so bad at math. So I would get really into the ideas of science, which is spoiler. I’m a science fiction writer now. Wonder how that happened. So I get really into the ideas of science, but I didn’t like I couldn’t do the formulas and the concepts without a lot of extra work.
00:06:13:06 – 00:06:27:07 Unknown I remember turning in assignments in high school and my physics teacher, who I adored, would look at like my homework, which was like 20 pages, and all the other kids had done a page and he was like, How did you do that? Like, you have the right answers, but why don’t you do every single problem the hardest way?
00:06:27:07 – 00:06:43:01 Unknown And I’m like, Well, that’s the only way I can understand to do it. I don’t understand the easy formula. It’s too hard for me. And he would just kind of throw up his hands and market and be like, okay, fine, live your life. But I mean it. So I would do things like read books. So like, I read a lot now, but I’ve always done that.
00:06:43:01 – 00:07:04:21 Unknown I would do things like the teacher would be talking and I’d be reading a book under the desk, you know, except in one lesson or whatever. I wasn’t interested in the lesson or I wanted to learn something else. So that was totally kind of my thing. I was a weird, bookish kid with a lot of with a lot of imagination who knew like strange factoids at strange times and probably was kind of off putting so I also came from a quite a religious household.
00:07:04:21 – 00:07:26:18 Unknown So I was always filtering everything through this kind of religious reader, which was mixed, which is weird cause I was also really into like fantasy and science fiction. So that was like asking strange questions about like, whoa, like, do centers have salvation? So, you know, like you’re really strange. I look back at, I think, good God, how did I have any friends?
00:07:26:18 – 00:07:54:20 Unknown But I managed, I guess. my gosh, that’s really amazing. Yeah. I mean, so I can kind of relate to, you know, the resources part of like, you know, your parents not being able to provide the resources that maybe some of your peers had. And I’m kind of in that place of finally forgiving my mother, my single immigrant mom for not having those resources.
00:07:54:20 – 00:08:26:03 Unknown But it took a really like it took a decade of being angry and being very frustrated. So, you know, I’m glad that it is possible to get over that. So thank you for that picture. And also, I love this this question that you raised at the end of like do centers find salvation? Like that’s really amazing and this idea of like how you are a weird kid and I’m kind of curious because you did mention your peers and making friends.
00:08:26:05 – 00:09:00:04 Unknown What what were your friends like? I you know, I always I don’t I manage to have friends, but you know how like young girls have kind of a. yes, right. I was always very much at the bottom of that pecking order. And it wasn’t always my fault. I mean, again, I don’t think my parents understood like the care and feeding of children in general, especially children who had such a different lifestyle than what they had by their design, like, I think so.
00:09:00:05 – 00:09:24:04 Unknown I think where it stopped for my parents was we have more money than we had when we were with when we were kids. Our kids are in better schools and better neighborhoods than we had when we were kids. What’s wrong with them? why aren’t they flourishing? Right? Because there’s so much more to it. You know, like my mother wasn’t in the same social groups as like my peers, mothers, especially when I was in the gifted programs.
00:09:24:04 – 00:09:52:22 Unknown These were all like white suburban mothers with professional husbands who had time to do things like help with homework and do all these other, you know, or like drive them to social things or manage their lives so that they could become whatever they became later debutantes and etc.. My mother had none of that. She worked a 40 hour a week job, a full time job in a difficult field where she was going through.
00:09:52:22 – 00:10:11:10 Unknown Like now I can look back and recognize as I’m struggling as a professional black woman myself, my mother was 1.0 of that. She was really struggling with a lot of things and like she was very open about it. But I don’t think she realized how what she was struggling with, to be honest, because now looking back, I’m like, clearly that’s what was going on.
00:10:11:10 – 00:10:33:08 Unknown Like she told me some stories now, like things about how like some of the things her coworkers would say to her, some of the inequity that she noticed were things like pay she was really going through on a professional front. And my father was frankly pretty absent. He was there. And for a black family in the nineties in our neighborhood, people would be like, what, your dad is there, That’s fine.
00:10:33:08 – 00:10:53:16 Unknown But he wasn’t there. You know, he was there, but and when he when he was engaged, he was very engaged. And when he was not, he was really just not there. But they were trying their best. They just did not have a great toolbox to work with to begin with because they were coming from parents who were part of the Great Migration, who had wound up in New York in the 1940s.
00:10:53:18 – 00:11:17:18 Unknown That’s a whole other skill set, you know, like it’s a whole different, I don’t think. And I think this is something that black Americans and the children of American immigrants have in common is that we belong to entirely different worlds than our parents and our grandparents did with completely different skill sets. And our parents do their best to paradise with what they have because they don’t know that that’s not what we need.
00:11:17:20 – 00:11:32:19 Unknown And that was very much the situation with my parents. So when you asked me what kind of friends I have, I remember again feeling awkward. I mean, I had friends. I was funny. I was mouthy. I got myself in a lot of trouble because I did not know when to shut up. I mean, like, I didn’t say much because I was all I always had my face in the book.
00:11:33:01 – 00:11:52:10 Unknown But if you said something that pissed me off, I was going to make you cry. And then you were going to kick my ass on the way home from school, that was just how it worked. So but I was funny, you know, and it was nice. So I, you know, I had friends, but I was always kind of at the bottom of that girl pecking order in school.
00:11:52:12 – 00:12:13:19 Unknown And there were and I was also, I think, a little distant because after a certain point, I would say around like middle school, I started to be embarrassed about my home and my family because I would go to my friend’s house and see that things were totally different and not didn’t have the emotional maturity or the social understanding to know why it was different.
00:12:13:19 – 00:12:31:21 Unknown But I just felt less so. I never invited friends. I mean, I would try occasionally I would invite friends over and I would just be really nervous and tense the whole time, right? Because I’d be like, Is my mom going to do something weird? Do they like my house? Do they think I’m poor? You know, all of these things, you know?
00:12:31:21 – 00:12:52:03 Unknown So that was so I had friends, but we were never really close. But that said, I do still talk to some of them from some of my friends from middle school and high school. I don’t think we were ever super close. But then maybe I’m wrong. I mean, we still talk. I mean, I went to Prague last summer on a writer’s program and a girl I went to middle school with who we were really good friends, actually reached out and had all.
00:12:52:04 – 00:13:16:17 Unknown She lived in Prague for a while and had all this advice for me and everything. And I mean, I feel like I think like a lot of people who always feel a bit like outsiders, I’m very self-critical when it comes to like looking back on relationships. I never quite feel like I managed that. What’s the word? Not managed up, measured up well enough in the in those relationship ups, because I always felt so foreign in a lot of ways.
00:13:16:19 – 00:13:38:16 Unknown But I don’t looking back at the actual material circumstances of like how I’m still connected to certain people and how I’ve been able to have conversations with people after many years of passed. I don’t think I did that that way. I just think it felt awful all the time. Gosh, there are like three avenues that I want to explore with what you just shared.
00:13:38:16 – 00:14:01:17 Unknown First, I wanted to say I can totally relate to, you know, being afraid of when your friends came over of that judgment of what are they going to say? Are they going to think that I’m poor? I remember one of my really good friends, she came over once and she was like, you know, your house smells like you have a cat.
00:14:01:22 – 00:14:25:08 Unknown And, you know, it was like, I didn’t have a cat, but, you know, like Asian food smells a certain way and the like. We have dried fish around the house and it’s part of like the shamanistic culture, you know. And so when she said your house smells like you have a cat, it was like, you smell the fish.
00:14:25:10 – 00:14:52:22 Unknown And, you know, it was very embarrassing. So I kind of, you know, understand that. And I my like inner child really feels for you and me both as you shared that. Also, I really love this idea of you explore doing this concept of closeness to friends and how like even in the way that you were speaking, you were questioning like, I mean, they were really good friends.
00:14:52:22 – 00:15:20:22 Unknown They were really we were close, but, you know, still having that ambiguity of like, are we really good friends? Like, is there enough to keep us together? Like that kind of thing? And I’m wondering, like when we define friendships and relationships that are close to us, I feel like ironically, they’re always in relation to all of the relationships that we have.
00:15:21:00 – 00:15:53:16 Unknown And so I’m very curious, when you had the awareness that the friendships that you had in middle school and high school weren’t as close as that question makes sense. It does. And I don’t know. I don’t even know if I ever really thought about it that way in terms of closeness. I just never really knew. Like I had parents who didn’t have a lot of friends, right?
00:15:53:18 – 00:16:16:03 Unknown So like, I didn’t have models for friendships and I didn’t really And most of what I knew about friendships were was from books, which is a very heightened, dramatic sort of friendships, especially in like these nineties era, like middle grade and young adult like books for girls. You don’t really want to get your blueprints for friendships from that.
00:16:16:05 – 00:16:37:07 Unknown So I was just never really sure. I never I didn’t have any real blueprint for what a good friendship was. I was just kind of muddling through and kind of going through and I was never I never really loved that whole, like, catty like, let’s talk about everybody, let’s be mean kind of thing. I didn’t love the mean girl stuff, but I but you know, what else do you do now?
00:16:37:07 – 00:16:55:06 Unknown There’s like, it was really hard just to figure out what a friend was. And I got bullied quite badly. So it was also like, are my friends people who are like defending me or are my friends? I mean, who are, you know, like, what does this mean? You know, how do I make friends? Am I really making friends?
00:16:55:08 – 00:17:17:14 Unknown Forgiveness was a thing. Like, I didn’t I mean, there was just so much I didn’t know and didn’t understand because I didn’t really have models for it. And then something that came up when you were talking about like that kind of feeling of judgment, when people would come to your house, there were cultural differences as well. So being part of gifted programs in Denver in the nineties meant I got bused to a school that was like an hour, an hour and a half away from my home neighborhood.
00:17:17:16 – 00:17:40:19 Unknown So the friends that I had at that school work were basically white kids who were in that program first because they tested into it, but also because those programs were put in urban schools that were at risk of white flight, essentially for parents who maybe couldn’t put their kids into a day school or private school or moved to a better a better neighborhood.
00:17:40:21 – 00:18:01:22 Unknown But they were still able to stay in those neighborhoods because they had those programs, which is not the official remit. But that’s how I understood it. Right. And then they would kind of bus in a black kid from here and there and everywhere, a couple of Asian kids, a couple of Latino kids. And because, you know, we have test scores, right.
00:18:02:00 – 00:18:20:19 Unknown And maybe for other reasons as well. So I was bus to a school really far away, and then I would go home to my home neighborhood where it was much more diverse. And I really diverse. Denver In the nineties, at least in the neighborhoods in the north side of Denver, was really a miracle because it was very multicultural, but almost nobody was white.
00:18:20:21 – 00:18:43:05 Unknown So you had well, not I wouldn’t say almost nobody was bi. I think it was just that white people were part of the ecosystem and not like a dominating force like they often are in so many suburban neighborhoods. So yeah, so I would go home and we and there would be people who are black, who are Latino, who are Asian, but all from very similar backgrounds.
00:18:43:07 – 00:19:01:10 Unknown And the friendships there were completely different. And I struggled with that so much more because just the fact that I was bused across to this across town, to this other school instantly made me a snob. It made me an Oreo. You want to be white. And then I came from this weird family who also weren’t from Colorado, right?
00:19:01:12 – 00:19:25:04 Unknown So it was just like who weren’t local and didn’t have any local friends and, you know, we kind of didn’t really it we just didn’t really fit into any of the existing social systems in many, many ways. So there I was, you know, trying to figure out how do you make friends, what is a friend in really different contexts that were kind of next to each other in my life, but were totally unfamiliar to any of the people.
00:19:25:10 – 00:19:50:21 Unknown Like there was maybe one or two people who understood both of those worlds that I knew. Yeah, you know, there was this article that somebody wrote for The Korea Times or The Korea Herald, and they were talking about friendships and how making friends is different in Korea than it is in the United States. Did you read it? I saw that, yes.
00:19:50:23 – 00:20:29:08 Unknown Yeah. So in that article, I can’t remember the whole article, but the part that, you know, really stood out for me is that in Korean culture, there’s this idea of if you if you introduce somebody, you can rely on the connection of that introduction that was made to know that this person isn’t going to treat your relationship badly, that they’re not just going to, I guess, take advantage of you because that there’s like this protective, you know, feature of this introduction.
00:20:29:08 – 00:21:05:01 Unknown Friend. Right. And when I read this, I was like, gosh, that was like my whole childhood, you know, the way that I received information about how to connect with people is by way of introductions. And so I didn’t know how to make friends on my own. And that was kind of the expectation in the United States that everyone was individual and that relationships weren’t, you know, that you could just make relationships.
00:21:05:01 – 00:21:26:23 Unknown They weren’t part of something else. Do you know what I mean? Yes, but yeah, I know what you mean. But at the same time, I think that that is partly an illusory idea in America because people still do become friends due to proximity. And most people know their friends because they belong to certain social groups or certain organizations or certain classes or demographics.
00:21:26:23 – 00:21:51:02 Unknown That’s how people become friends. And I think I think there’s this idea that everybody’s very I mean, I also lived in Korea for quite some time. And although I am not, of course, culturally Korean, I really actually kind of enjoyed the protection of proximity friendship. As a foreigner in Korea, I really learned to rely on that, because if you do meet somebody in the wild, chances are they just want to learn English from even in their grave.
00:21:51:06 – 00:22:09:10 Unknown But if you meet somebody through a Korean friend or even a foreign another foreign friend who has a good Korean friend, then you know that that’s a real friendship. And that meant a lot, right? Especially I was there for a long time. And like, after being relentlessly ghosted for like the first two or three years, I was like, okay, got to change my tactics here.
00:22:09:12 – 00:22:36:16 Unknown Somebody introduced me to people. But I think that there are a lot of things about American culture that are actually quite similar to some of the ways that things are formed in broadly Eastern culture. I don’t love that term, but I think it makes sense here. Yeah, that because we have this very strong projection of our individuality gets ignored.
00:22:36:18 – 00:23:01:16 Unknown So people are just as likely, I think, to have to rely on networking and proximity for friendships in the US. It’s just that you can, if you want, to make reliable friendships outside of that, but it still tends to be because of proximity groups. That’s true. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just that I just think we’re not very transparent about it because people will sit there and be like, I’m my own man.
00:23:01:16 – 00:23:45:05 Unknown All my friends are because I am my own man. And then really it’s all people they know from their country club. Like, really, you really didn’t try hard. That’s true. That’s true. And so I think like when you’re talking about, you know, this idea of like making friends and are they there to protect me or they, you know, I remember there was a friend that I had and because I had very low self esteem and had zero idea that I could actually protect myself and not just think that I deserved whatever came my way, you know, he would be like, you don’t deserve this and would yank me out of confrontations that he knew that
00:23:45:05 – 00:24:17:06 Unknown I, you know, didn’t belong in. And I just remember finding so much comfort in that. And so for me, I think when I was younger, friendships were all about like comfort. And also when I was even younger, it was all about, you have the same taste in hair bows as me. So you’re my friend, right? I mean, departing from that actually coming into consciousness of making friends based on the likeness of our internal worlds, right?
00:24:17:07 – 00:24:40:16 Unknown Not just based on our physicality. And so I could definitely relate to that idea of are they there for protection? And you mentioned this, that you were bullied quite a bit, and I was wondering if you could share, like why? I was weird. I mean, like, I cannot emphasize enough how weird I was and I was not just weird.
00:24:40:16 – 00:25:00:03 Unknown I was like weird and self-confident enough to talk back about my weirdness and like, I’m not saying like, I was weird. Like, I was a little bit awkward. No, I was like, really? Like even me, like adult me right now looks back at Kid Me like girl you had problems with. Can you share a story? Really strange.
00:25:00:05 – 00:25:20:05 Unknown You can instance that can illustrate the think. Yeah let me think. I don’t know. I mean, I just, you know, I think because I didn’t have very good models for things, sometimes I would just do it to see what would happen. Like I had kind of like this sort of not daredevil streak, but some sort of like, okay, you know what?
00:25:20:05 – 00:25:43:02 Unknown Fine. I don’t know what’s going on either. Everybody else is acting like they know what’s going on. The only way I’m going to figure this out is if I do something that I think makes sense or something that I think doesn’t make sense. Right. And just kind of live with it. And so, you know, a lot of my acting out was really just kind of me doing what I wanted to do right in my own like, and not necessarily paying attention to other people.
00:25:43:04 – 00:26:09:02 Unknown Some of my fashion choices were strange, some of and then some of my hair choices were strange, but that wasn’t my fault. That was instituted by my family. like, I just didn’t I didn’t want to fit in enough, I guess. And that was part of it that I was just. And because I didn’t, I want to say I was perfectly self-confident.
00:26:09:02 – 00:26:27:08 Unknown No person is. And I’m certainly not that now, even though I’m much more mature. But I guess there was a part of me that was like, Whoa, you think my hair is weird? I think your shoes are weird. I’ll tell you that. I like the idea. Usually when somebody bullies like, there’s that whole thing that is in books and movies and things for kids.
00:26:27:08 – 00:26:49:06 Unknown It’s like if you stand up to the bullies, they’ll stop. They’re cowards. They’ll stop messing with you. No, no. Right. Yeah. So what happened? Right, is that somebody would bully me based on something that was different or weird about me, whether it was my fault or not. Right? Like he used to pull my hair all the time as kids because I had different hair than everybody.
00:26:49:07 – 00:27:05:22 Unknown So people would pull my hair and sometimes they were like, they pull hard enough to pull it out. Like it was really bad. Right? And like, I think the response in that situation is I’m going to cry and feel bad. And I did that. But then I would also come back and be like, So let me talk about your greasy, greasy granny.
00:27:06:00 – 00:27:27:18 Unknown And that was when the problems would really start. Like there was a point I just did not know. And I think like I’m the oldest of a lot of kids at the time was the oldest of three. I’m the oldest of six. Ultimately. But like when the time period that I’m thinking about when I was bullied quite badly was in middle school and I mean, everybody gets bullied a little bit in middle school, at least they did in the nineties.
00:27:27:18 – 00:27:49:05 Unknown It was just part of the landscape. But you know, your go I in middle school you’re already going through so much in terms of like things like identity and I was often the only black kid in the white space and then I’d go home and it’s like that joke by Aisha Tyler. If you’re in the gifted and talented program, you’re the only black girl in the white classroom, and then you go home and you’re the only white kid in the black neighborhood.
00:27:49:07 – 00:28:15:10 Unknown So like, there was all of this. Yeah. So there was this all of this mismatch and all of these identity things and like also feeling confident in my blackness and feeling confident about my weird family and just feeling like not feeling accepted anywhere. All of that was coming out and just weird shit, right? But I, there was a part of me, I think, that understood that a lot of it wasn’t necessarily my fault, if that makes any sense.
00:28:15:10 – 00:28:38:08 Unknown Yeah, some of it was, but some of it also was just circumstantial. It wasn’t necessarily my fault that I was so different than these other people. It was just what it was. And if that was what they were going to pick on me for, fine. Let’s talk about you too. But in the movies you do that and the bullies are like, no, she has a backbone.
00:28:38:08 – 00:29:03:12 Unknown I’m going to cry and run away. No, in my world, the bullies were like, you want to talk about people’s mommas? All right, fine. Let’s catch you. I’ll see you outside after school. So I got I really got like, just I mean, I would get bullied. Bullied. And it was funny because my parents at first were like going up to the school, like the first like ten times after that, it was like, you know what?
00:29:03:12 – 00:29:21:01 Unknown Just learn to fight, kid. Come on. You know, like to catch to the or actually stop telling them about it. Right? And it wasn’t because, like, I don’t think they cared. It was just that they don’t think with everything else that was going on in their life, they did not have the attention span to like, do what needed to be done to get it to stop, if that makes any sense.
00:29:21:01 – 00:29:37:13 Unknown And also it was to the point what was embarrassing for me, because my parents were member of the school and because of a lot of who killed John, somebody would get suspended. And then the minute they came back to school, that was my ass. So it just never really helped, right? So I stopped telling them about it. I just kind of took it after a while.
00:29:37:15 – 00:29:57:01 Unknown And sometimes my grandmother, I would tell my grandmother, I miss her so much, right? But I would tell her about it and she would just listen. And I told my grandmother knew I was a weird kid, but she loved me very much. So she would just listen and like share a few things, but generally just listen because I think that was what I needed.
00:29:57:01 – 00:30:18:19 Unknown Because I don’t think she knew what to do either. Because again, totally different skill set she had. She had grown up in an era that rendered her entirely unprepared to raise children in the next era. Yeah. And that she raised children who were then entirely unprepared to raise me right, who maybe were not in a situation where they understood, like I didn’t understand how to fit, and neither did my parents.
00:30:18:19 – 00:30:37:00 Unknown And I realize that now. But at the time I was just like, I can’t tell my mom I got beat up again. It’s just too embarrassing and it’s not going to stop. So I guess I got to think of something worse to say, my mom’s very stubborn. I was so stubborn. Like, I would not shut up. I just did not know to shut up.
00:30:37:01 – 00:30:56:16 Unknown All right. But I think if I had stopped talking back and I did eventually, because I guess I mean, you know, everybody gets tired of getting dragged eventually. But like, for a long time, I just figured, you know what? If you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want. Wow. So. my gosh.
00:30:56:18 – 00:31:21:21 Unknown So there’s so much here that the story you were expecting, was it? No. But, you know, I can relate to some parts of this. I remember being bullied by the same person and in the same group of friends or, you know, group of people for, you know, a very many long what I don’t know, five, six years during middle high school.
00:31:21:23 – 00:32:06:07 Unknown And so I I’m like, you know, this is pulling up like my own past and I’m so curious about like that ability to to fight back. And you said you’re the oldest of six. And so I’m curious like how the dynamic at home between you and your siblings, because I imagine most families with with that many children or siblings, that there is a bit of conflict or like probably every day And the way that you’re managing it, depending on like your order and all of those things.
00:32:06:07 – 00:32:35:14 Unknown And I’m curious the the similarities and the differences in how you were, you know, managing conflicts and things like that at home versus the way that you were managing social conflicts at school with your bullies. And if there were any similarities. probably not, to be honest. I think like a lot of kids, I was probably a really different person at school than I was at home.
00:32:35:16 – 00:32:55:07 Unknown I mean, because at home my parents were really not engaged and very engaged at the same time. They were disengaged in terms of like actually, I don’t say this as a slight to my parents, just to make it clear. I mean, like when they were doing their best, they tried their hardest. That’s all anybody can do. They just didn’t have the tools to try hard and have it be effective.
00:32:55:13 – 00:33:17:14 Unknown That makes any sense. And they didn’t do. I mean, I’m not that horrible. I mean, I didn’t do a bad job. They just didn’t do the kind of job that set me up for what they wanted from me socially. I’ll put it that way. Right? And so they were very disengaged in terms of like frankly nurturing things. And but they were very engaged in terms of behavior.
00:33:17:16 – 00:33:38:16 Unknown And keeping the house, though, like kind of having sort of an iron grip, like one of my parents was always on one in terms of like, I’m in charge, do this. You know, it was never be both of them at the same time. But one of them was always on a bit of a power trip. And I think that had to do with things happening between them as well.
00:33:38:16 – 00:34:01:09 Unknown I mean, like I don’t want to get too much into my parents situation, but it was very it. So at home I was frankly often uncomfortable and scared a lot of the times. But also I’m the oldest daughter in a black family and culturally that means that you are often adults are fired and turned into a caretaker when you were very young.
00:34:01:09 – 00:34:18:18 Unknown And that was very much the case with me. So I very much mean when my parents in the places where my parents were disengaged, I was often trying to fill in the gaps as much as I could, very poorly, because I did not have the skill set. I was not good at things like that. I didn’t even understand how to do a lot of things like that.
00:34:18:18 – 00:34:35:11 Unknown But I mean, I remember coming home when I was as young as like 13, 14 and coming home and cooking dinner and then doing my homework, Right. As a matter of fact, I remember one time a good friend of mine in high school made me cry. He was thoroughly perplexed, like, Why are you crying? It was a compliment because I didn’t realize it was one of those.
00:34:35:11 – 00:34:59:19 Unknown I was very sensitive when I got to high school. Middle school, not so much. By the time I got to high school, I was very sensitive about having certain things, about how dysfunctional my home life was and how dysfunctional I felt. I was very sensitive about having those things noticed because I was starting to twig to the fact that, you know, maybe it’s okay to fit in, you know, and maybe you want to have a certain lifestyle that you’ve got to figure out.
00:34:59:21 – 00:35:16:03 Unknown I’m still not good at it, but I understood that that was something that I should want. And I was starting to get a little bit sensitive about having things noticed. And this is somebody who I’ve been friends with since we were in the fifth grade, know like a very long time. And when we were in high school, we neither of us drove at the times we were taken.
00:35:16:03 – 00:35:35:03 Unknown We would take them. We had to take the school bus even though we were old enough to drive. Both of us had problems. Our parents couldn’t or wouldn’t just drive me to take the school bus, which was already embarrassing. But I’m taking the school bus home and you know, we’re talking and we were talking with another kid who was also having some challenges and I wasn’t saying anything.
00:35:35:03 – 00:35:50:19 Unknown But out of nowhere, my friends, like, I don’t understand your parents. I mean, like you run the house. You raised your brother and sister. And when he said to me, you run the house, I just burst into tears. I was like, You noticed? Like, I felt horrible. So I was like, What do you mean? I run? I mean, I guess I do, but I’m not supposed to.
00:35:50:23 – 00:36:13:02 Unknown And you’re not supposed to know that. Like, how do you know? Right? So it was, you know, one of those things. So I say that to say that at home, I had, I guess, a lot of responsibilities that had nothing to do with whatever prepubescent and pubescent chaos was going on within me. So I’m sure that it came out in certain ways, but that was not something that came.
00:36:13:04 – 00:36:49:09 Unknown I don’t know that that’s something that came out in my conflict resolution skills because what I often did, frankly, was model my parents and their power trip kind of stuff. So conflict. What’s that? I’m the boss, right? And at school I will say that I mean, I think maybe it sounds like I was good at fighting back, but it wasn’t necessarily that it was I genuinely I was too dumb to know I shouldn’t do it, you know, like, I think had I been smarter, I would have shut up and figured out a way to make friends or, like, fit in or do whatever it is that middle school kids do to get along with middle
00:36:49:09 – 00:37:07:12 Unknown school. Right. But I just didn’t have the sense to understand. Like, I knew I was different, but I didn’t understand that that was a bad thing. And so I just fine. I figured we’re on the same and this kind of is still in my thinking a bit in a different way, but I think in a good way, right?
00:37:07:12 – 00:37:23:12 Unknown But I was like, Find we’re the same, right? Like you don’t have I, I can talk to you the way you talk to me, right? Was kind of where my but I didn’t. That wasn’t because of any bravery on my part. It was because I really didn’t understand where I was in the pecking order, if that makes any sense.
00:37:23:14 – 00:37:44:08 Unknown Right. In that way, with my little girlfriends, though. With my little sister, with a little with my with my little friends in school, the other girls. I was very meek and mild. I did not fight with anybody because I knew where I was in that situation. I knew that I was a terrible girl, right? So like, I just kind of knew, okay, fine.
00:37:44:08 – 00:38:02:06 Unknown They when I if they’re making fun of my hair, my nose, whatever. Okay, I’ll take it. Because I wasn’t bad at being a girl, but I was good at other stuff. I mean, I was good at being a human being and I didn’t need to be harassed for that. I thought I mean, I don’t know. It’s hard, like thinking about I mean, I’m in my forties now, so we’re thinking back 20, 30 years.
00:38:02:06 – 00:38:25:12 Unknown It’s hard to really understand how I thought then because it’s changed so much. Yeah, this is the best, I guess, approximation of what I can think of. Yeah, that’s really good. You know, so the past like six, seven years I’ve kind of I’ve been in therapy because I’ve had to like, unlearn a lot of things that were really preventing me from growing.
00:38:25:14 – 00:39:06:09 Unknown And one the big things that I noticed in that I kept coming up and still comes up now is that when I was younger I was very like at the bottom of like the poly vagal ladder of just like dorsal vagal, just like not I would just shut down and whenever there was conflict I would either shut down freeze I or I would just fawn because I knew that like appeasing to my enemies was going to bring the biggest chance of survival.
00:39:06:11 – 00:39:39:23 Unknown And so that’s kind of where my chronic people pleasing came from. And so, you know, I was just telling my therapist last week or this week that I’m finally at a place where my emotional maturity has come to this place of fight or flight. Like I can actually fight now. And, you know, like now we say like my inner child is no longer a child, is now a teenager and is very angsty and is like, I’m going to do what you did to me.
00:39:39:23 – 00:40:10:09 Unknown And I am definitely equal and I am going to do the same thing that you’re doing to me. And so, you know, when you say that you were this way with your bullies, I’m just like, Gosh, that is such a healthier place to be. You know, in my opinion, obviously that’s not the case in every situation. But, you know, from from where I was standing, I was like, gosh, if only I could have had that ability to fight back for myself.
00:40:10:09 – 00:41:00:17 Unknown Where would I be now? And, you know, I’m trying to raise my daughter in a way where she can be able to speak up for herself if something were to if someone were to try to take away her power, you know? But I don’t know what the healthiest way to model that is. And so, you know, I kind of wanted to talk to you about like, you know, you getting into reading and I love that you’re like the equal opportunity reader and how you really read diversely and widely and are very conscious also about what you read.
00:41:00:19 – 00:41:35:14 Unknown And, you know, I think this really deepens and opens up your empathy for a lot of people. It allows you to connect with people as equals, really, like not as side characters or you really are able to see them as heroes of their own stories. And you engage with these people as heroes of their stories rather than thinking of them as just, you know, like a pawn your world.
00:41:35:16 – 00:42:00:16 Unknown And the way that I gleaned this is just the way that you interact with people online, the way that you communicate, the way that you write. I think even the way that you write, it’s very clear that you know that you’re just a person and that everybody else are also people and that no one is above or below.
00:42:00:18 – 00:42:53:18 Unknown And so I really just kind of want to understand how you got there. I know you said that you were a voracious reader. You always had your nose in a book when you were younger, and you know that evolution of how you grew into understanding that other perspectives are equal to your own. I think I think something that certainly developed across my life through the diversity that was in my, my neighborhood growing up, the diversity in my family were all black but from very different places in a lot of situations, you know, kind of like where the big black nations always joke the and just so I don’t know, I think in some ways
00:42:53:18 – 00:43:16:03 Unknown I kind of always noticed this because I’ve always been really interested in culture and in other ways. I think it’s just been developed through my life choices. So when I was 25, I got this crazy idea that I didn’t want to live in America anymore. It wasn’t entirely Muslim where the thought started. The thought was, I have had a horrible quarter life crisis of a year.
00:43:16:05 – 00:43:34:14 Unknown Here’s a gap year program in England. I’ll go to England for six months and then I will go back and do whatever it is I’m supposed to do. But when I got to England, I found a place to live in a neighborhood I really liked and a job. And I stayed for six years, for six months and stayed for six years.
00:43:34:14 – 00:43:53:19 Unknown Kind of crazy. And the neighborhood I moved into and it well, the first thing was that I was the only American in my neighborhood. The only North American. There was a South American family from Peru who I was very close with. But so it was my first time being not only the only American, but the only black American.
00:43:54:01 – 00:44:14:12 Unknown And I have never felt blacker in my life in a more positive way. No, because people were constantly running up to me, like with examples of a from American culture that were either things I could not relate to at all. Like people would ask me about things that were clearly from white America, and I would have no idea what they were talking about.
00:44:14:14 – 00:44:34:03 Unknown And then some little kid would be like, do you know the game? And I’d be like, No, but at least I know who that is. The game. The rapper, Right? So, you know, like I would get these really like different kind of things that I felt very, very, very, very, very black. But in the most positive way that I think I’d ever felt black.
00:44:34:05 – 00:44:54:19 Unknown I’m one of the ones I left high school. I went to a predominantly white university in a little tiny cowtown in the western slope of Colorado, and it was a great experience in a lot of ways, but I was one of three at one point. This wasn’t always the case, but I remember at one point, counting and looking, there were three black women in the county and I was one of them.
00:44:54:21 – 00:45:17:06 Unknown There are a few black men, but they were mostly coming to the school for athletic scholarships, so they were not really interested in being socially involved with at all. Not in some cases that wasn’t true, but in some cases it was actually. I still have two good friends who were both there who are both black men who were there on athletic scholarships, and we got along fine.
00:45:17:06 – 00:45:44:11 Unknown But generally speaking, there was kind of there were some dudes who were disappointing. So I went to this predominantly white institution and was very it was interesting because I think some people, when they are some for some American people of color, when you’re immersed in an all white and mostly all white environment, there’s this pressure to assimilate and a lot of people tend to lose.
00:45:44:13 – 00:46:07:05 Unknown I say this very loosely loose culture when they’re in that situation because they really want to fit in. But that was never my thing. So I responded by growing out an enormous afro and becoming super, super black to be black also, because I realized that I did not want to relate to the dominant white culture at all. Like it was not appealing to me.
00:46:07:06 – 00:46:27:23 Unknown There were aspects of it that were appealing to me, mostly the men, but I mean, there are other things that most of it was just really not that interesting to me, and I didn’t necessarily want to be a part of that, and I didn’t. And I found it enormously liberating to realize that I didn’t have to be. I had my own culture that I liked and felt like I fit into.
00:46:28:04 – 00:46:46:12 Unknown And I the Internet message boards were a thing at the time. I found a message board that was all black women, that was all carefree black women, carefree black girls, black girl magic. Before that was a thing. We all had natural hair and we were all just trying to find our best way. And I’m still you know, it’s funny talking about that.
00:46:46:12 – 00:47:00:15 Unknown We’re talking before about, like, how I’m not really sure, like if I’m good at making friends, but as we’re talking, I realize I have a lot of friends that I’ve had for like 20 or 30 years and never really thought about it because I’m still very good friends with some of the women from that message board in real life now.
00:47:00:15 – 00:47:21:12 Unknown Yeah, but, you know, just a way of kind of discovering, like really embracing the fullness of our blackness, of our femininity, of our black femininity in a world that maybe a lot us, not all of us, but many of us, for coming from situations where that was not a place where that was affirmed or acknowledged or even understood and so that was kind of my college experience.
00:47:21:12 – 00:47:39:23 Unknown So in some ways it was a very isolationist, and in some ways it was I still managed to make friends. I mean, I think people really did guitar to hear my black shit, but I still, you know, but I didn’t. But I think it again, like, there’s that thing in my head that is always kind of equalizing, like I can have you can do what you want to do.
00:47:39:23 – 00:48:01:22 Unknown I can do what I want to do, and I want to be black and happy, right? So I it never really it was funny because I remember once being in a conversation with another black woman who I didn’t know very well, and black stuff came up and I was on my like, I’m reading, you know, like I was at the time I was reading all of these, like black thinkers and I had gotten million dollar books and all this stuff.
00:48:02:00 – 00:48:15:01 Unknown And I mean, looks isn’t even revolutionary, but it really it didn’t offend the white people that were in the room because they all knew me and they were all used to my bullshit. But the one black girl in the room who didn’t really know me the minute they all left, she was like, I would never do that in front of my white friends.
00:48:15:01 – 00:48:35:01 Unknown That so offensive, like, you’re being racist now. That was my girl. Excuse me. Right. But I’ve had that response quite a lot from sometimes when if I’m in a room full of white people and I’m just very authentically myself, I will sometimes have a have that response from the one or a few other people of color in the room.
00:48:35:06 – 00:49:00:21 Unknown Like if you even say the words white people, they’re like, You can’t do that. You’re going to offend the white people. I’m like, That is the point. If they’re offended, I don’t want to be friends. I mean, I’m trying to filter here, right? So I don’t know. So that was my experience in college. And then I go to England and I loved it for because again, I felt so I really I didn’t I never missed America materially.
00:49:00:23 – 00:49:20:07 Unknown I did miss black American culture that I missed people, of course, as well. That’s a different thing, though, I think, because people can visit you. Yeah, but and I lived in a neighborhood called the Triangle, which was really unique, and I’m kind of going on a bit here. I hope this is a point. I don’t know. I wrote a neighborhood called the Triangle in an area called Old Trafford.
00:49:20:07 – 00:49:48:18 Unknown In the triangle was called that because it was literally three streets like. So that formed a triangle in the middle of those three streets, two really big mosques. the way that the triangle was formed was that you had this kind of row of the triangle was like Windrush era Caribbean families. So like most all of the they were like second, third generation Caribbean families, people whose parents who like that first generation had come over after World War Two.
00:49:48:20 – 00:50:13:11 Unknown This line of the triangle was some white British families. But and then this line of the triangle was all and I’m probably saying this inaccurately, but to give you the idea, I mean, like the demographics are a lot more specific than that. But just to give you the general idea, this line of the triangle was all like Muslim families, mostly Southeast Asian, some Arab Muslim families.
00:50:13:13 – 00:50:37:02 Unknown But at the point of the triangle, you had a little church with a big soccer and a cross that soccer field where projects and I lived in northern England and something that nobody told me about England or northern England or Europe in general. So you go to the projects in any Western European country, we have this idea in our heads, I think, as Americans, that the projects means black people, maybe Mexicans.
00:50:37:04 – 00:50:53:21 Unknown In England, the projects are the poorest, most degenerate white people you have ever met in your life, lovely human beings. But like I have never met, Hood asked white people like that in my life. I was so shocked. I was not expecting it at all. I go there like I’m going to work with people in the projects, expecting them to be like black British people.
00:50:54:01 – 00:51:14:01 Unknown No white, Irish, white. Right. And like I said, I’m not saying that to be like to say that there was there was nothing wrong with those people. I’m still friends with some of them now. Right. I really loved the people I worked with. I loved that neighborhood from all areas of the triangle and from the little estates on the and the tip of the triangle called school walk.
00:51:14:03 – 00:51:45:12 Unknown But I was not expecting the to be what they were. Right. But living in that situation again, mate shifted my understandings of where culture was and where class was and how people relate to each other. And it really started to, I think, develop my understanding of lenses. Right? And I didn’t miss I noticed very much that some of the things that people would say to me about America, they were clearly expecting me to have a certain perspective.
00:51:45:12 – 00:52:06:16 Unknown But that perspective as a white American perspective, as a black who enjoys my culture, who is very much present within my culture, even if I don’t fit into it in a stereotypical way, necessarily. I had a very different lens on what England was and how class and how race worked in England, because I was used to being having it work in a certain way in America.
00:52:06:16 – 00:52:29:11 Unknown It was very, very different in in the UK. So that was kind of the beginning of beginning to develop a more international lens. But a lot of traveling and I when I was in England, I went to grad school eventually and all of these things started to develop a lens and help me understand that actually I’m right. If you want to do what you want to do, I can do what I want to do, right?
00:52:29:11 – 00:52:52:05 Unknown Like blackness is not a limited edition expander. This gives me a very unique perspective on the world, on culture, on people, because I’m coming from a really different place than maybe some of my white colleagues were. And I don’t say that in order to try and create a hierarchy of value, because I don’t believe there is one. And that’s the point, right?
00:52:52:07 – 00:53:15:12 Unknown There are simply lots of different perspectives, and I think it’s important to recognize all of those. There’s that old apocryphal story told by I forget her name now. She she did a TED Talk. She’s one of the she was one of the very first people from the British Council to go and teach in Kuwait back when it was a hardship post so she wouldn’t taught English in Kuwait.
00:53:15:12 – 00:53:39:01 Unknown I will send you that. Her name after we do this so that you can maybe watch the TED talk. Your last is great. It’s a wonder as an educator, it’s a great talk to watch. And she’s talking about the need to not see English as a as a default lingua franca, but to bring back translation and to stop requiring test scores for English language for people who don’t need English language, do their careers.
00:53:39:01 – 00:54:09:18 Unknown Like she brings up the example that Einstein never would have passed Italy. Yeah, that’s true, right? But he was. But we still he’s still able to do the work that he did. Like, why are we imposing the artificial metrics of language in ways that are not necessarily effective? And she tells this great story in the TED talk about how when people were summoned, when DNA was being sequenced, there was an issue when it was being sequenced for an animal that had front forelimbs and hind legs.
00:54:09:20 – 00:54:31:18 Unknown And it was British scientist, I believe, working on it. I don’t know if the story is true, but she tells it in a way that made me believe that the idea is definitely true, the idea behind it. So they were trying to figure out how to spot the difference in the DNA for forelimbs and hind limbs for legs and hind legs was and like really struggling because they were not seeing the the the distinctions that they were expecting.
00:54:31:20 – 00:54:50:17 Unknown And then along comes some German scientists and they were like, they found it like that. And the reason is because in English, you say for legs and hind in German, there’s no difference. There also isn’t a difference in DNA, the same DNA for both sets of legs. And because the German language works differently, these German scientists had no problem figuring it out that quickly.
00:54:50:17 – 00:55:22:14 Unknown But the British scientists were bound by their language. They were looking for what they expected because of their linguistic lens, right? Yeah. It’s kind of the same, I think, in terms of reading, in terms of culture, in terms of looking at things through different cultural lenses. I really resist the idea. I think for example, I really struggled sometimes when I lived in Korea because you’d run into these kind of Korean allergists who are usually foreigners, usually older white men who, you know, you’d be like eating soup on a Tuesday, and they’d pop up out of nowhere and be like, Well, don’t you see how Confucianism?
00:55:22:14 – 00:55:46:22 Unknown And I’m like, okay, first of all, I have never seen a Korean person in downtown Seattle who’s like, Look at all of the Judeo-Christian emblems, Really, Right? Like, that’s so lame and so stupid. I’m sorry. It’s just it’s such it’s so reductive that it’s not useful, right? Like, there’s a whole lot more that goes into a culture than just the age, just symptoms or whatever.
00:55:46:22 – 00:56:13:18 Unknown Right? And then also they would have like these sweeping pronouncements about Korean culture and like Confucianism versus Judeo Christian Islam and collectivism versus individualism and these sweeping pronouncements that I mean, they make sense to me because I was raised in America in a very white educational system. So I know what they’re talking about, but I also think they’re bullshit because I have a completely different lens, right?
00:56:13:19 – 00:56:43:09 Unknown So the way that I see things often was really different and maybe more egalitarian because I think what people don’t often forget about that kind of white supremacist frameworks, and I don’t say that to say that these guys are white supremacist. Some of them honestly are, but not all of them. It’s just that when we were raised in this culture in the West, where we see kind of white culture, for lack of a better word, there’s a hierarchy that is sometimes subtle, sometimes very unsettled, but systemic no matter what, right?
00:56:43:09 – 00:57:06:11 Unknown It’s just ingrained in the society. And there’s a lot of work being done to undo that. And some of it’s effective, some of it’s not whatever, but that hierarchy colors everything. As a black person, as an American who’s at this point spent most of my life outside of America. I don’t necessarily have that hierarchy in my thinking, but I do have a different lens and I’m aware of it now.
00:57:06:11 – 00:57:28:17 Unknown I say that and I’m now that I’ve said it, I’m 100% sure I’m going to screw up and like I say, some ridiculous hierarchical bias. Actually, I really hope that’s not case. But but like, I think that there’s I, I so I really miss it. So what often what happened was that somebody one of these criminologists would say something ridiculous like don’t you know that kimchi?
00:57:28:17 – 00:57:54:20 Unknown And first of all, stop it. Nobody is analyzing mayonnaise like this. Second of all, like, do you know how arrogant it is to just sit in the middle of another culture and instead of observing and understanding, you’re making pronouncements, comparing it to yours is anybody cares what your culture has to say about this culture? And third of all, if that is the case, how come only your culture gets to say stuff about other cultures?
00:57:55:00 – 00:58:20:10 Unknown interesting. Right? So for me, I very much resist the idea that there’s that we all have to use that cultural lens as an intermediary through which to see each other. yeah, Yeah. So, yeah. So I think that a black person in Korea has something of value to say from their own perspective. I think that a Korean in Dubai has something of value to say about Dubai from their own perspective.
00:58:20:12 – 00:58:41:21 Unknown I think that a queer person in a straight world has something valid to say from their own perspective. I think that a disabled person I enabled has a valid thing to say from their own perspective, and I think that the validity of those perspectives lies in their equality, not in their hierarchy. So that makes sense. Yes, it does.
00:58:41:21 – 00:59:08:06 Unknown And it really makes me think about like, you know, ethnocentrism and like cultural relativity and how, you know, there needs to be a singular lens to, I guess, dominate or hegemony heights. I don’t know if that’s a word, but, you know, just that there needs to be a singular standard. And so I love that you’re breaking that apart.
00:59:08:07 – 00:59:45:18 Unknown You know, separating the difference with the value. Right. Because so much of what we say and the the instances that you bring up, the examples of the Korean ologist that you bring up is kind of amazing because you’re right there because it’s from their standard, which happens to be most of the time, many of the times, if we’re not careful, the standard, right, that we see the world that I don’t know they’re just so fascinating.
00:59:45:18 – 01:00:18:01 Unknown And I love how it’s all coming together. And I think it’s really important that we’re able to show our young people that even though that they’re young and they may not have as much experience as some of us who are older or have the emotional maturity to understand some of the things that they don’t, that they have equal value with their own perspectives on the world, and they’re not any less valid than our own.
01:00:18:03 – 01:01:00:01 Unknown And, you know, growing up in a Korean household where, you know, like you living in Korea, there is a hierarchy in age and just everything. There’s so much hierarchy. And I just remember being the youngest in my family, I had zero power and I was not living my life for myself. I was seen as an extension of my family and so in many ways I want to equip my daughter with that agency of like that internal ISE locus of control, of knowing that her perspective is just as valid as everybody else’s.
01:01:00:03 – 01:01:27:11 Unknown And I’m wondering, like I know you are an educator for a really long time you taught at universities here in South Korea. You know, you do a lot of reading, which I think automatically makes you an educator. And so I’m wondering like, how do you think we can either by way of reading or reading consciously or exploring perspectives that aren’t our own?
01:01:27:12 – 01:02:15:10 Unknown How do you think we can, I guess, raise the next generation of students who may not be educated in, you know, the same systems because we are living in a borderless world now? How do we get them interested and understanding the skills to be understand that other perspectives are just as valid as their own. This is interesting because I think there’s a few ways to look at it because, you know, as you were talking, I did find myself thinking here, you know, hierarchy does have its benefits is the right word.
01:02:15:12 – 01:02:47:13 Unknown Sides I suppose it makes things easier to understand. Sure. Right. So hierarchy is a great tool for creating order out of the chaos that is often human relationships. Right? The problem is that hierarchy requires power and it steals power from people who from people on the bottom of the hierarchy and gives the people at the top. And that’s the problem with hierarchy, which is why I think the answer to your question is twofold.
01:02:47:13 – 01:03:08:17 Unknown I think a lot of it depends. So when it comes to giving young people, to educating young people in a way that lets them know that their perspective is valid and every perspective is valid. I think for a lot of young people it starts with simply being told that their perspective is valid and being shown that they that they are not just the sidekick.
01:03:08:17 – 01:03:36:11 Unknown You know, I just saw this film Monkey Man, Dev Patel, and the film is brilliant. It’s this image developed for me, but still brilliant. But what startled me was listening to the interviews. And Dev Patel is a big star, right? Like, and I guess I always I’ve only ever really seen him in things where he he’s had a pretty primary role, but in all of his interviews he says something that really kind of made me sit up and think about it, because when people are asking, Why did you want to make this film?
01:03:36:11 – 01:03:58:15 Unknown This is his directorial debut, and he really went through hell to get it made. And it took him years. And it’s it’s very much you can see the work and the love that goes into it. When people ask him why he made the film, he keeps saying in every interview that I’ve seen, he’s said it’s because he wanted to make a film where he could see someone who looks like him as the action star.
01:03:58:17 – 01:04:14:06 Unknown He didn’t want to be in an action film where he was the sidekick or the guy who acts the main frame or whatever. And it’s funny because this just goes to show, I think, how I don’t know. I don’t know that my perspective is all that unique. But I thought to myself, yeah, he’s Indian because, I mean, I watch Bollywood films and Bollywood films.
01:04:14:06 – 01:04:38:07 Unknown Of course, the guys in the Bollywood films are the action stars, Bollywood and Hollywood and all of the other various Indian film scenes. Yeah, but he grew up in England, didn’t he? So I. And I had never thought of it that way. Right, I guess, yeah. For English speaking films. Films made in the West. Yeah, right. And I thought, what year is it?
01:04:38:07 – 01:05:14:11 Unknown Are we still doing this? Right? And then I also thought, okay, this is what we need to do, clearly, Right? So I think so for some, for a lot of young people, I think it I think that that perspective lies in being told that their perspective is valid. Because I think just like I was saying before, you know, like what a lot of young people of difference, for lack of a better word, what a lot of people of difference do is they are educated in a world where they are never seen as the primary perspective.
01:05:14:11 – 01:05:31:21 Unknown Yeah. And a mixture of that from themselves as they get older. Like that woman I was telling you about when I mentioned white people in a room full of white people, she was like, you can’t do that. It’s offensive, you know, because she had begun to steal her own perspective from herself. Right. So I think some of it is just being told.
01:05:31:21 – 01:05:51:10 Unknown But then that begs the question, which a lot of people are worried about. I’m not particularly worried about this because they can figure it out. But people do ask the question, you know, well, what about the white kids? Okay, A lot of people at this point are like, I don’t care about white pick white kids. I actually do care about white kids because my black kids will have to grow up with white kids.
01:05:51:10 – 01:06:13:04 Unknown So, you know, you need to care about kids, too. And also just because I mean, you need to care about everybody. White kid perspectives are just as valid as everybody else’s perspective, but they are not the only ones that are valid and I think that there’s there’s a meme that goes around that says, you know, it’s important to have kids read perspectives that are not their own.
01:06:13:05 – 01:06:34:11 Unknown Yeah, and I think the same is true of white kids. White kids need to see that somebody black might be the hero one time. They need to see that somebody, you know, like. And I think it’s the case with like abled kids needs to read that maybe somebody disabled can be the hero one time. Maybe, you know, like people need to see perspectives that are different from their own and realize people are normal to themselves.
01:06:34:13 – 01:06:55:23 Unknown Somebody being different does not. And this is like, I use this hashtag all the time, hashtag O normal. And people are always like, What is that? And I’m like, I want it to go viral so bad, right? It’s never going to happen. But I’m just fighting the good fight here. People need to be there. normal people need to see that other people are their own normal to themselves.
01:06:56:01 – 01:07:16:00 Unknown A sister friend of mine, British Jamaican, once told me a story about how she was renting a room in a house with a white British family and she would, you know, make her lunch. And her lunch was often something cooked, something ethnic for of a better word. And one day the owner of the house comes to her and says, Why don’t you ever make anything normal like sandwiches?
01:07:16:01 – 01:07:41:15 Unknown And it’s that it’s that, right? It’s this idea that there’s only one normal and it’s mine. That’s what needs to go away, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that’s the case for all of us. But I also need I sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off there, but I think that’s the case for all of us. But I think when you’re looking at people who form I don’t know what the preferred term is anymore.
01:07:41:15 – 01:08:08:08 Unknown I’m having a hard time keeping up people who form, I don’t know, majority viewpoints, white kids, able bodied kids, straight kids, cis kids, kids from the West, kids from the from the global north. Right. Rich kids. All of this. I think it’s important for those of us who belong to majority communities to know that other people are normal to themselves and see that.
01:08:08:10 – 01:08:38:18 Unknown But I also think it’s important for people who are from minority communities, other communities, racialized communities, gender and sexual minorities, disabled people, anybody who has ever been made to feel like they are less than in a social situation because of their existence also needs to see that they are normal to themselves. And I think that that can coexist with a lot of our I mean, I don’t I’m not a big fan.
01:08:38:18 – 01:08:53:13 Unknown I don’t really think you need to get rid of Sherlock Holmes and replace him with somebody else. I think you need to have Sherlock Holmes and that other dude. The problem is that all of this that I’m saying is more work and nobody wants to do that. We are lazy, but we don’t have to be is the thing.
01:08:53:13 – 01:09:18:08 Unknown You know, it is a little bit of extra work, but a lot of things are a little bit of extra work. Abolition. That’s extra work. I mean, come on. Yeah. Sometimes the right thing is more work. It’s. Yes. Everything you just said. Yes, yes, yes. And, and I just think like, I love this hashtag. I would love for it to go viral, own normal.
01:09:18:08 – 01:09:51:15 Unknown And, you know, I think, my gosh, I just have so many ideas. And being a visual thinker, like I’ve already created a brand, you know, like created a visual identity. And so it’s like I want to see them on shirts or not just shirts, but, you know, I just want to see them everywhere. And I think it’s so I think what you just said is really important that first we have to start with telling our young kids that their perspective is normal.
01:09:51:15 – 01:10:13:09 Unknown We have to, you know, I think before we empathize with other people, we have to have empathy for ourselves or else it doesn’t work, then it’s performative empathy. And that that doesn’t even that’s not even a thing. But you’re performing empathy. And so people think think you’re compassionate and empathetic. But and I love this idea that you shared.
01:10:13:09 – 01:10:37:07 Unknown I can’t remember the exact words right now, but like stealing yourself, right? Stealing that power from yourself. It’s like if we give all of our empathy and compassion away to other people, we’re really stealing it from ourselves. And then we live our whole lives thinking we are side characters or sidekicks, and we’re not living our lives for ourselves.
01:10:37:09 – 01:11:08:08 Unknown So I love that you’re centering this advice on first, starting with having empathy and knowing that your is first valid before you’re able to recognize that you can coexist with other people’s perspectives because they’re as valid as your own. And sometimes you you come second and that that’s okay, right? And that sometimes you are the sidekick in somebody else’s story and they get to be the hero.
01:11:08:10 – 01:11:52:17 Unknown But as long as you read widely and know that everybody gets a chance at being a hero, that’s how we’re all able to stand in equity alongside each other. And so I sort of want to ask you about conflict, too, right, of when we’re out in the world and, you know, doing this really challenging thing of human relationships and maintaining contact and achieving social, whatever it is, what do you see is the biggest issue right now in the way that we communicate with other people?
01:11:52:19 – 01:12:18:04 Unknown Yeah. You know, it’s an interesting question because I’ve been talking through of a version of this question with various people in my life lately because I’m confused, I suppose. I think the Internet has done an interesting thing, sort of flip in a way. I mean, I remember when the Internet was like a sanctuary for people who just wanted to talk because you really had to give and take.
01:12:18:05 – 01:12:46:22 Unknown And it was more conversational, I think, than it is now. Whereas I was really frustrated the other day on Threads, of course, because I was looking at something and it was weird because it felt like there were no it was every thread I was looking at that day. There were no conversations happening, right? It was just everything is either a lesson or a branding moment or a proclamation, and there’s very little actual talking happening.
01:12:47:04 – 01:13:06:22 Unknown Right. And I think that’s like the brand ification, the ad ification of the Internet is contributing to this and the influencer economy is contributing to this. And I don’t blame it all on the Internet. I think that the Internet is fair. I think, you know, the people say this life imitate art is art imitating life. I very much think the Internet imitates human nature.
01:13:07:00 – 01:13:25:20 Unknown People want to blame the Internet for lots of problems. But I think the Internet itself is pretty neutral. You’re just making it monstrous. It’s not always. But, you know, some of the I mean, because there are beautiful parts of the Internet still. I really love the way that the Internet allows because, I mean, look, we are talking on the Internet right now.
01:13:25:21 – 01:14:01:09 Unknown It’s yeah, it’s I love the way that it enables really good connection sometimes. Yeah. It Doesn’t always do that. But I think that that’s a function of human nature. I don’t think you can blame the Internet as a tool. As a tool. It’s neutral, in my opinion. But that said, I do feel like kind of this the way that people have learned to engage on social media, especially people who’ve always had social media as a part of their online experience, don’t necessarily know how to just have a conversation where it’s give and take, where they listen to the other person, and then the other person says something back.
01:14:01:09 – 01:14:25:14 Unknown And that’s a way of getting to know somebody and relating to them and having a conversation and a part of relationship building. And it still happens. I think that there’s a definitely a segment of people who feel like everything that they say in response to someone has to be didactic in some way or declamatory or like a meme of some sort.
01:14:25:14 – 01:14:45:03 Unknown And it gets a little bit frustrating. Like I have a lot of conversations like that now where I think I’m having a conversation and I feel like I’m having a conversation thinking I am connecting to another human being. This is a glorious experience and they know are like, Let me tell you about a thing I know. And I’m like, Good morning.
01:14:45:05 – 01:15:11:08 Unknown You. It’s a little bit. I think that that is definitely a problem. I don’t know, though. It’s something that I’ve been kind of ruminating on for a while. There is clearly something wrong with the state of human communications right now in some spheres, but I think a lot of it is just that everybody feels like they need to be teaching somebody something and instead of understanding that that is all in exchange isn’t it.
01:15:11:10 – 01:15:47:18 Unknown Yeah. And so that is another thing that I have struggled with my entire life is I don’t really know what the purpose of communication is sometimes, and that’s why teaching came so easy to me because there was an established understanding of how the dynamic was supposed to go and like, yeah, and coming from a Korean culture of where everything is so precise, scripted, and even the way that English is taught is okay, where if you’re in this situation, here’s the script.
01:15:47:18 – 01:16:17:04 Unknown If you’re in this situation, here’s the script, you know, and I don’t know, being questioning autistic, I’m like wondering if this is the reason why I struggle with social communication in general. But and the way, like for me, it has always been about finding common ground of like, this happened to you. This happened to me. But then that doesn’t seem like sufficient in the world.
01:16:17:06 – 01:16:51:03 Unknown And so that’s when I started to get really confused and I was like, What am I supposed to be saying? Like, and then I started seeing like, people would like it about exchanging power, and then, I don’t know, it just got really confusing. And so for me, adult conversations still really confound me. And having taught communications for, you know, a little less than 20 years, I’m just like, how was I teaching it wrong?
01:16:51:05 – 01:17:27:07 Unknown And also like preparing my daughter, like, what do I teach her or not? What do I teach her? But what is the thing that I would like to guide her to understanding or things like that. So I guess, you know, for you, what is an ideal conversation? What does an ideal conversation look like for you? And by that I mean what brings you the most joy in connecting with others?
01:17:27:09 – 01:17:58:15 Unknown I I’m going to give you an answer that is going to drive your questioning autistic mind mad. And I’m sorry. Right. But it really depends. There’s put I know, I’m sorry. There’s nothing really precise to it. It depends on the situation. I mean, I think I think in the most general of terms, for me, a conversation that brings me joy is something where I feel like I am hearing somebody and they’re hearing me.
01:17:58:17 – 01:18:25:05 Unknown But even that’s not really the crux of it, because I’ve had conversations where I’ve heard exactly what somebody was saying to me. I knew they heard exactly what I was saying to them, and we walked away angry at each other. Anyway, that’s not necessarily good. I don’t know if it’s good communication, but I think, you know, one of the things so I moved back to America almost three years ago after being abroad for 15 years and a lot of things.
01:18:25:05 – 01:18:48:18 Unknown I’m finding that there’s a lot things I struggle with in American culture because I’m not used to it anymore in a lot of different ways. And one of the things that I’m struggling with that I have been struggling with is that Americans really don’t know how to be disliked. It’s people really don’t understand that you don’t like not everybody is your friend.
01:18:48:20 – 01:19:11:12 Unknown Somebody can dislike you and still do right by and somebody can dislike you and just dislike you. Like you don’t have to be everybody’s best friend. You don’t need to be adored by everybody. It really comes. I mean, I, I don’t love doing these broad these these broad generalizations. Generalizations are cool, but whatever I’m going to make when American culture is very narcissistic and that’s part of it, right?
01:19:11:12 – 01:19:47:23 Unknown Like everybody has to like me. I have to be nice all the time and be likable all the time. I have lived abroad enough and enough different places and have enough like different cultural things jammed into my being at this point where I don’t care if I am unliked, right? But I that’s not normal. I don’t know that it’s necessarily normal in a lot of places, but there is that famous book that small I don’t know how famous it is, but popular book that was translated from Japanese into English recently, The Courage to be Unliked.
01:19:48:01 – 01:20:05:18 Unknown Yeah. I mean, the idea is that I think and I think the idea in some cultures very much is, yeah, some people aren’t going to like you, but that does that. That’s not about you, all right? Like you still have to live your life if even if people don’t like you, there are other people who will adore you and just focus on that.
01:20:05:20 – 01:20:33:16 Unknown And I think actually a culture that has a hierarchy is perhaps a bit more protective in that way because you know that even if somebody when it goes wrong, somebody in a hierarchy who doesn’t like you, somebody above you in hierarchy who doesn’t like you can make your life hell, but when it goes right, they take their their position as somebody in a hierarchy who has a responsibility for those who are below them in hierarchy, whether or not they like when it goes right, you are still protected despite dislike, right?
01:20:33:18 – 01:20:53:10 Unknown It doesn’t always work that way. But, you know, ideally it depends on how fair the people dealing with are. But in America, people are very much like, love me, You don’t love me, you must hate me if you don’t like me. I can’t trust you. And, you know, like, come on, it’s really sometimes you’re not going to be everybody’s best friend.
01:20:53:10 – 01:21:13:08 Unknown That’s just now, not how that works. And also, if you’re everybody’s friend, are you anybody’s friend? Really? you know, so that’s something that I struggle with in terms of communication, because I find a lot of communication to be very artificial. Because everybody wants to be so likable all the time. Everybody wants to be nice all the time.
01:21:13:13 – 01:21:35:04 Unknown People don’t do conflict or disagreement very well. And I do think some of that is in response to our current social and political climate here. Yeah, everything is polarized. People don’t know it. Like you mentioned before, that people don’t really know how to disagree with each other, even over small things. You know, like I have seen things escalate in wild, wild ways where it’s like, I like cheese.
01:21:35:04 – 01:21:56:19 Unknown I don’t like cheese. you’re a racist. What? Like things just escalate. People really do get way overblown about disagreements or like the whole I don’t really think cancel culture is a thing because everybody who’s been canceled is still a billionaire. Nobody’s ever been canceled out of actual money. I mean, nobody’s been canceled and into consequences. Maybe some people don’t like.
01:21:57:01 – 01:22:19:16 Unknown But being disliked isn’t canceling. That’s a consequence of being unlikable, right? That’s I mean, that’s not a thing. But that said, there is a tendency, I think, for people to want to be right so badly that they pile on anything that is that is unfamiliar or that challenges them in the way that they don’t like. They pile on.
01:22:19:16 – 01:22:47:17 Unknown They find something, some obscure point of possible theory that they learned somewhere that they can parrot back at you and then pile on and make it horrible, which means which is very, very bad for critical thinking, which is why I went to a political forum some weeks ago and there was this Republican former senator speaking, and somebody asked him, what’s the best possible thing that could happen before the election in November in America?
01:22:47:18 – 01:23:18:06 Unknown And this mandetta said, Yeah, one can go to jail, the other can go to heaven. That’s how we wound here, that level of discourse. Okay. Yeah. And it’s just like this. I love what you’re saying and I totally agree. And I am starting a new podcast with some friends and there is I think one of the episodes is about this idea of the being of having the courage to be disliked.
01:23:18:07 – 01:23:43:10 Unknown And I that’s kind of the evolution I’m trying to make in my own story, is I recognize that so much of my life I spent wanting to be liked and was the crux of so much of my problems. And you’re right, Like we are at this place of like a lot of social public discourse, of saying, okay, if you don’t agree with me, then you must be a bad person.
01:23:43:12 – 01:24:21:04 Unknown And I love what you’re saying about, you know, we can still disagree and still do right by people or we can dislike each other or don’t have to be nice and polite and still do right by each other. Right. And I think that’s a very difficult concept to wrap yourself around when you don’t have the psychological safety, you know, in society either because you’re, you know, not part of the dominant culture or because you are part of the dominant culture and you don’t want to be outed by the dominant culture or whatever the case might be.
01:24:21:06 – 01:25:05:16 Unknown And so I guess like my last question really for you is sort of if disagreement is okay or if being disliked is okay and it’s okay to, have conflicts, what do you think is the best way to resolve conflicts in a way that brings social connection again across our societies or circles versus perpetuating division? So one of the ways in which are very different to real life is that in books and in stories like humanity, so much of the human condition is about telling ourselves stories, right?
01:25:05:16 – 01:25:28:02 Unknown And then all of our stories, our conflicts are resolved. But in real life, not all conflicts can be resolved. And I think it’s important to recognize that before we talk about the best way to resolve the conflict, not all conflicts can be resolved. There are some fights that just need to stay. Fights if it comes down to like if I’m not going to get into a resolvable conflict with a member of the KKK for example, that’s not happening, right?
01:25:28:04 – 01:26:10:18 Unknown I don’t want that conflict to be resolvable because those are two ideological positions that are diametrically opposed. There is a very there is a very definite right and a very definite wrong. I don’t want to resolve that conflict. We fighting right. But in terms of conflicts that are resolvable and in terms of defining what a resolvable conflict is, I think I think it’s important to understand if we are working towards the conflict is because we are working toward the same goal in different ways, or is the conflict because we have different goals that are opposing.
01:26:10:19 – 01:26:43:02 Unknown So I think a lot of the situation right now in America, in American politics and I mean everybody has an opinion on this, but why not mine? I think a lot of the current situation in America is because we are not very good right now at understanding which conflicts are, because we are trying to reach the same goal in different ways, in which conflicts are because we have entirely different goals that are not being communicated.
01:26:43:04 – 01:27:11:02 Unknown Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of our conflicts are more the latter than the former right now, and that is why things are so difficult to get. I mean, I don’t know. I think there is this fundamental idea of caring for people and populations and understanding that government is by the people, for the people, not the people, for the government, by the government.
01:27:11:02 – 01:27:37:23 Unknown And, you know, that is very, very lost at the moment. And but I ultimately don’t know. I think part of the problem is that I don’t feel most Americans I mean, I know five of us, but still I don’t feel like most Americans feel as though people are working toward same goal, which makes the conflict seem unresolvable. I feel like people want very different things.
01:27:38:00 – 01:28:04:00 Unknown I read this really interesting thing in the New York Times. They do these like panel profiles every once in a blue moon where they, like ask a group of people of kind of who have one demographic point in common, but everything else is different, what they feel about a certain political thing. And this time it was about the elections and it was a group of men who are different ages and races and political viewpoints, political stances, and, you know, like jobs, all of these different things.
01:28:04:00 – 01:28:24:18 Unknown And it’s interesting because there was an issue where there was a moment where I think one guy was kind of hitting at the crux of the issue. He’s been a Republican his whole life, but he was saying, you know, he he has been voting Democrat, Democrat, because he feels that Democrats are getting things done and Republicans are just like yelling about trans people.
01:28:24:18 – 01:28:55:02 Unknown And I’m like, exactly. Those are different goals, right? Yeah. Like, what is I? I think there’s this idea that there’s a goal of the government can either be about regulating morality or creating a functional system in which people can regulate their own morality, for example. Right? And that’s the current. So those are two different those are two different goals, which makes us an unresolvable conflict, right?
01:28:55:03 – 01:29:16:10 Unknown Yeah. And that’s just I mean, a horrible kind of scary example. But I think ultimately that’s the thing with conflict and also to understand that in a way, like what I said before about, you know, like learning about friendships of books, and that’s not necessarily what you want learning about bullying from books, and that’s not necessarily a good model for how things often work in real life.
01:29:16:10 – 01:29:39:11 Unknown Yeah, not everything is nice and neat in real life, and I think that and as much as I love reading, as much as I love books, I think they give us a great framework for how things can work in the best possible way, because there’s always a resolution. But real life is not always like that. We can hope.
01:29:39:11 – 01:30:04:17 Unknown We can dream. Yeah. And you know, as you were saying, it made me realize, like, maybe it’s not so much in the resolution between the person you’re having a conflict with, but it’s more of you being okay with how things are going and coming up with a conclusion or meaningful conclusion for yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think yeah, that’s a very good point.
01:30:04:17 – 01:30:24:18 Unknown I think a lot of conflict comes from a lot. Conflict is ultimately self conflict pressuring. You’re mad at somebody else because you’re mad at yourself. Thank you so much for listening. If any part of this episode resonated with you, please connect with us on social media at the links in the show notes. Until next time.